box together and place them in a microwave for about a
minute. Set the wrapped wood aside for a couple of
minutes after removal from the microwave to allow the
plywood to thoroughly steam before attempting assembly.

Next, very carefully stretch and hold the long piece
that makes up the box sides a couple of millimeters to
widen the wooden corners. Then, proceeding very slowly,
wrap the side piece around the bottom piece, locking the
tabs in place as you go.

■ FIGURE 5. NeoPixel ring set from Amazon.

Once you get the wrapping done, place the top piece
onto the box, and set the box aside and allow it to dry
completely before proceeding. Once the box is dry, it will
retain its shape so you can take the top or bottom off to
work on the electronics that will be placed inside.

I believe the small size of the flex box base is partially
responsible for its fragility. Larger flex boxes probably
wouldn’t be quite as fragile because there would be more
material in the flexible corners. I have included the
postscript design file for these flex boxes in the zip file
available at the article link. The general design file called
flexbox_v.1.3.ps can be opened in any text editor and the
boxlength, boxwidth, and boxheight variables can be
changed to produce boxes of any size.

I have also included treebase.svg which is the design
for the tree base used here. This file was created by
copying flexbox_v.1.3.ps to a different file, opening it up
in a text editor, and then setting the user defined
parameters as follows:

■ FIGURE 4. Tree design from Thingiverse.com with
items labeled.

Define box parameters ——This is the size of
the box you want
/boxlength 3.0 inch def
long dimension of flat side of the box
/boxwidth 1.5 inch def
dimension across the hinge
/boxheight 2.5 inch def